Saturday 2 June 2007 11.40 EDT
First published on Saturday 2 June 2007 11.40 EDT

'Explain yourself!' Lessing at Hay. Photograph: Martin Godwin

"I don't think a writer should deliberately set out to be provocative, but there's certainly something very abrasive about me," Doris Lessing conceded. "But one of the great advantages of being a writer is that you can't care what other people think of you. We're as free as anyone can be in this society."

Maybe it's her age (87 last birthday), or her reputation ("Britain's Greatest Living Author" etc), but Lessing does give the impression of not giving two hoots for the world's opinion. Taking the stage at Hay, the old dame of English letters acknowledged the applause with a comically dismissive shrug. She then proceeded to dynamite pretty much every question that was lobbed her way. "That doesn't make any sense," she snapped at one adoring fan. "Explain yourself!" Later she sat with what appeared to be infinite patience through one particularly lengthy inquiry only to remark at the end that she actually hadn't heard "a single word of it".

Yet still the questions kept coming. She was asked what she thought of female circumcision, and about what she thought women could do to stop men making wars, and about why today's teenagers were so complacent that they wouldn't touch challenging feminist literature with a bargepole. Such probing was suffered with a wry exasperation.

The problem, perhaps, is that a sizeable proportion of Lessing devotees embraced her 1962 classic The Golden Notebook as their bible and still look to her as some banner-waving outrider for the feminist cause, with the final word on every issue under the sun. Small wonder she has grown so contrary of late - making statements and writing novels that seem guaranteed to confound the fanbase.

Her latest book, The Cleft is a case in point. It depicts a tribe of passive, slothful prehistoric women who are galvanised by a bunch of exciting, adventurous men. "I'm not saying, 'This is how it was'," she complained yesterday. "I'm playing with an idea. People are always asking writers for definitive answers, but that's not our job."

When pressed, however, Lessing puckishly conceded that yes, she did think that women were perhaps a little more conservative than men. Men, she supposed, were possibly an antidote to female complacency - "our greatest sin".

For good measure she went on to suggest that as she gets older she has become more like a man, in that the menopause makes women that bit more balanced and makes life that much simpler. Except that it didn't work that way for her personally, she clarifies, because she didn't actually have a menopause.

At this point the woman in the row behind let out a low groan. "What is she saying?" she demanded. "She's totally contradicting herself."

"Well, she is eighty-something," explained her male companion. "It's hard keeping her train of thought at that age."

On stage, Lessing continued her merry dance, performing abrupt u-turns and double-backs, spicing the routine with a few lethal qualifications. I never felt she'd lost her train; I think she knew exactly what she was doing. These were mischievous evasion tactics, iconoclastic stylings, and the sign of a mind that is restless, but not wandering.